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Vesalius was appointed physician to Philip II., and returned with him 

 to Spain in 1559, just at the period when the Inquisition was in full 

 activity. In Madrid " he could not lay his hand on so much as a 

 dried skull, much less have the chance of making a dissection." 



Along with Malatesta, in 1563, he made a pilgrimage to 

 Jerusalem. On his way he stopped at Venice, where he learned that 

 his pupil and successor Gabrielo Falloppio (Falloppius)had died in 1562. 

 It is said that Vesalius was invited by the Venetian Senate to return 

 to his Chair ; on his way back from the Holy Land, he fell ill and was 

 put ashore at Zante or Crete and there he passed away in 1564. One 

 account states that he was shipwrecked and perished of hunger. A 

 second edition of the Fabrica was published in 1555, but the eulogium 

 on Jacobus Sylvius, which found a place in the first, finds no place in 

 this. Vesalius observed for himself, and set up the method of direct 

 ocular inspection and exact observation as a method of inquiry — he 

 appealed to nature, and not to the doctrines or authority of individuals, 

 at least so far as anatomical facts are concerned. His anatomy was 

 that of the human body, and the result of his own labours, but his 

 physiology was that of Galen. Galen proved by experiments on 

 living animals that the arteries contain blood and not air. He showed 

 that the left side of the heart during life contained blood of a scarlet 

 colour — he called it " pneumatized " blood. It was already known 

 that the right side of the heart and the vessels connected with it 

 contained venous blood. How does the blood get from the right to 

 the left side of the heart, and how do the veins communicate with the 

 arteries ? Galen had a general notion that veins and arteries did 

 communicate by " anastomoses." The veins took origin from the 

 liver, drawing their blood thence and distributing it over the body — 

 a very natural supposition, when we trace the course of digested food 

 from the intestine by the vena portce to the liver, where the blood was 

 " concocted " before it entered the great vena cava to be distributed over 

 the body. But on the complex Galenic theory all the blood was not 

 distributed by the veins to the body, some — a very small part — was 

 supposed to pass to the lungs by the pulmonary artery (vena arterialis) 

 and there gave off some " fuliginous " vapours and at the same time 

 took in something which Galen called " pneuma." Some of the blood 

 thus concocted and altered was supposed to pass by the arteria venalis 

 (i.e., the pulmonary vein) to the left heart, there to be further 

 perfected into "vital spirits." The rest of the blood, he thought, 

 passed directly through the septum of the heart, through the pits or 

 depressions which exist there. Galen regarded them as holes. This 

 blood, mixed in the left heart with the small amount of pneumatized 

 blood coming from the lungs, was then distributed by the arteries. 

 Both systole and diastole were regarded as active movements, the 

 diastole being active in sucking blood into the heart. 



